Is 'Big Bang Theory' going bust?

Watching the CBS sit-com “Big Bang Theory,” it's hard to imagine that the quartet of nerdy scientists at the show's center would actually enjoy it. Geek culture may be ubiquitous these days, from comic book superheroes on the big screen to the proliferation of video games, but really … “Big Bang Theory” isn't part of that. Rather, it's an outsider's perspective, caught up in tropes that are mostly out-of-date. It says as much about geek culture as another Chuck Lorre-created show, “Two And A Half Men,” probably says about the life of a jingle writer.

Generally speaking, the show is pretty funny, particularly Jim Parsons in the role of the socially clueless Sheldon. Other times, it's kind of awkward, especially if you're actually familiar with the geeky pop culture at the show's core. Sometimes, when you watch the show, it's clear that the creators have very little familiarity with geek culture, and are only aping stereotypes.

And then there's Thursday's episode, which centered on the show's three female leads — non-scientist Penny (Kaley Cuoco), microbiologist Bernadette (Melissa Rauch) and neurobiologist Amy (Mayim Bialik) — who go where, according to the commercial CBS used to promote the episode, “no woman has gone before”: the comic book store.

Never mind that Penny has been to the store before — she bought Sheldon a Spock action figure there not long ago, in a great episode that guest-starred Leonard Nimoy — and indeed, all of the female leads were in the store for a Halloween party just a few months ago. And while continuity isn't usually a sit-com's forte (except for the dragging-on but still-funny “How I Met Your Mother”), the disconnect is jarring for regular viewers.

But the scene in question, as pointed out by several comic book-orientedblogs, is that the arrival of three women in the store is enough to cause every patron in the store to stop and stare. That women appearing in the store is a jaw-dropping, alien experience.

Which might have been true in, say, the 1980s. It's certainly not the case when you visit That's Entertainment here in Worcester, or at my other two previous “regular” shops, the much-missed 21st Century Comics in Fullerton, Calif., and Forbidden Planet, in London, England. Having seen rather a lot of comic book stores in a lot of places over the past few decades, it's hard not to find that image wildly out of whack.

Perhaps it's too much to expect that a network sit-com have some resemblance to reality, but still … it's enough to take you out of the episode entirely, to illustrate that, when it comes to geek culture, “Big Bang Theory” doesn't know what it's talking about. (Other critics have gone further, with the website Bleeding Cool News telling geeks that “Big Bang” is “The television show that hates you.”)

But then, geeks aren't the audience for the show, mainstream America is. And perhaps mainstream America does have an image of comic book fans that's rooted in a time, say, before Neil Gaiman's “Sandman” made comic books more publicly acceptable, before Alan Moore's “Watchmen” made Time's list of most influential novels of the 20th century, before Christopher Nolan's “Dark Knight” and Joss Whedon's “Avengers” and a slew of other movies gave everyone at least a cursory knowledge of who a lot of these characters are. (Seriously, I mentioned Wolverine in conversation the other day, and my father-in-law knew what I was talking about. It's a strange new world …)

But, in the interests of playing devil's advocate, let's try to look at it from another point of view. The reason the three female characters were in the store in the first place was to pick up some comics to see why their significant others were so into them. OK, accepting that premise, what happens next? They pick up a single issue of “Thor” — without making a single overt Chris Hemsworth reference — each read it, and then declare it “Stupid. So stupid.” Then, discussing it, they find they disagree on points about what they've read, and in an effort to settle matters, raid their boyfriends' collections to read more. And by the end of the episode, they are fully engaged in a heated, passionate argument about comic book trivia, which is an element of the geek stereotype which is, alas, entirely true.

And maybe in this there's something of value in this episode. Yeah, the “girls don't read comics” stereotype is totally and demonstrably false. But if you take the women to represent “mainstream America,” and the typical “Big Bang Theory” viewer, then you have a different message altogether … that this thing that people dismissed as stupid and childish actually has some value, and is something you can actually become extremely engaged with, if you only let yourself.

Perhaps that's giving “Big Bang Theory” too much credit, but still … it's a far better message to take away than hackneyed geek clichés that are long, long out of date. (Victor D. Infante)

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